Let It Roll: On the Mishaps of Daily Life

Your go-get-’em outfit is soaking wet because you forgot to turn the dryer on.

You ran out of coffee yesterday but totally forgot, and you certainly don’t have time for a Starbucks line this morning.

Your last contact tore when you when you tried to put it in, so your stuck wearing your classes which are both too old to be stylish and too weak to be of much use.

I’m sure that each of us has experienced any of the above scenarios, and probably (unfortunately) some combination of two or more of them in one single morning. Add kids to the mix, and who knows what kind of chaos can ensue on any given day. When a perfectly planned day turns into bedlam, it’s hard to avoid these thoughts:

“Well, this day is shot.”

“Shouldn’t have even gotten out of bed.”

“What else could go wrong?”

“This day is just one disaster after another.”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that we start expecting and looking for problems. If we “roll with it” instead, we are able to laugh at life, stay calm and collected, and maybe even allow ourselves some creative solutions to meet the demands of the day.

For far too long I have written my to-do- lists in pen, set my goals in stone (metaphorically speaking), and allowed little to no room for the reality that I can only control so much of life. Also, by planning every single second of every day, I refuse to let God surprise me. For example, the alarm on my iPhone, which has never “glitched” before, did today. But instead of running around like a crazy person, I just snuggled up with my daughter and accepted that today was going to look a little different than I planned.

Jeremiah 29:11

As we begin yet another week filled with parenting, work, household, and other expectations and responsibilities, let’s change the script: instead of thinking that life is overly complicated and unruly, let’s think of it is as rich and surprising. Let’s roll with the unexpected, asking God to reveal to us what He would have us do, and letting Him wow us with His plan, which is so much better than ours.